VAX 780 on eBay

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 4, 2022, at 10:40 AM, Grant Taylor via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 1/4/22 12:14 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> Seymour Cray, along with Bill Norris and Jim Thornton and others left Remington Rand/UNIVAC after Rand bought the near-bankrupt ERA. Apparently, the work environment at Rand was felt to be stifling. Norris had all of the Navy connections and was a great marketer, so bringing some of Rand's engineering talent along was a natural.
> 
> Interesting.
> 
> I guess I thought that since Seymour left CDC to form Cray Research, that meant that he was more of an employee at CDC and had less influence on how it operated as a company.  I would have assumed that someone that was a founder would have had more influence and tried to improve things before splitting off and forming yet another new company.

Being a founder doesn't necessarily help much if the company gets big and chairwarmers take control.  It's one thing if you're a chairwarmer yourself and rise to CEO, but if you're a top engineer you may be in a non-control position -- especially back then when managers were managers and engineers just did what they were told.

For another example, consider Steve Jobs, who didn't even leave Apple voluntarily.

	paul